Dan Simmons has ether gone nuts or pulled off one of the greatest April Fool’s Jokes of all time. Simmons is a science fiction writer and he wrote a bad story in which a time traveler from one hundred years in the future returns to tell him of the Century War against Islam and how Islam is winning the way, including conquering Europe and pushing the United States to the brink of disaster. You can read it here, if you want, but I would not recommend it. It has a very first draft quality about it; definitely not one of Simmons’ (whose work I actually quite enjoy) better pieces. And, more to the point, it is insane.
First, the time traveler tells the protagonist that the lesson of Thucydides was that Athens lost the war with Syracuse and her allies not because it abandoned its principles for the sake of empire, but because it was not barbaric enough. That interpretation, to stretch the word to the breaking point, was enough to convince me that Simmons had to be playing some sort of grand practical joke. Because no one what has actually read Thucydides could honestly come to the conclusion that Simmons claims to have come to: that Athens failed because it wasn’t ready to commit barbarous atrocities.
The other clue is the Century War itself. We are supposed to believe that Islam, with all its fractions, which is split between dozens of countries who don’t all like each other and share nothing but a religion, and tends to be in materially poor nations conquers Europe and fights a prolonged war and apparently very successful war against the most militarily powerful nation the world has ever seen. Of course, he could be claiming that Europe is over taken by that historical bugaboo of racist everywhere: the Great Brown Peril that is going to outbreed all the white folk and take over. You know, just like the Irish swamped the good Protestants of the United States with their heathen Gaelic offspring and turned the country into a Vatican City toady.
Oh, wait. That never happened. Why? Aside from the fact that demographic trends never continue to infinity, liberal democracy has proven itself quite the attractive suitor over time. Every culture that has had the opportunity to try it out has eventually bought it. It goes against all reason, history, and human nature to think that Muslims would be different than every other group of people throughout history and, as a groups, massively reject liberal democracy.
I find it hard to believe that either scenario — conquest from without or within — would make it past the slush pile. The fact that it is a thinly disguised apologia for pre-emptive genocide would just be icing on the cake. But, as Belle points out, it certainly seems to have been swallowed whole by a good segment of the right wing blogosphere. Why? I suspect it might have something to do with why they all seem to think they are living in 1937: the BJ Armstrong problem.
BJ Armstrong was the starting point guard for the Chicago Bulls during their last three championships in the late 90s. On the court, next to other players, the 6′ 3″, baby-faced Armstrong looked like he was twelve years old. On the street, however, Armstrong was 6’3″ and his face didn’t look so babyish from its perch above you. Hitler, obviously, was a very real threat with the very real capacity to do enormous harm to the entire world. In metaphysical terms, he was actually of giant stature. The Iranians and the Muslim world in general pose nothing like that threat. Even if they were completely unified, they do not posses a first class military machine that could threaten the Western powers. But from the right perspective, say the perspective of small men who wish they were giants, the Iranians might seem larger than they are, like a pre-schooler playing a pick-up game against BJ Armstrong.
We do not live in a time where outside forces can destroy liberal democracy. There is nothing like the Nazi war machine to invade us and nothing like the Soviet Nuclear Missile Forces threatening to melt our cities. But instead of appreciating their good fortune, some seem bound and determined to pretend that whatever threat we do face is the equivalent of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia or even worse. I suspect that is because they are incapable of seeing that greatness can be had in making the world better and feel only that violent conflict can give their lives meaning. And these people get the best of both worlds, in their minds. Since their contribution to the “war effort” is hurtling bad interpretations of the books of dead Greeks and typing out pages of barely concealed calls for extermination, they can feel part of a grand struggle without actually having to put their flabby asses in harms way. They need to bleed to feel alive – - no, wait, they need to have other people bleed to make themselves feel alive. They are small men looking at other small men — like Bin Laden and the Iranian mullahs — as if they were colossus bestriding the earth.
It would be funny if it were not so pathetic.
leanleft
Kevin
tgirsch
Kevin T. Keith
Judd
In terms of a conventional military threat, I agree that there is no Muslim nation that represents a significant military threat – at least to anyone not living in Israel or India.
Of course North Vietnam’s military might paled in comparison to the US, and we all know how that ended. We didn’t do much better in Korea. In the two largest military conflicts since WWII, the US is 0-1-1. The point being conventional military superiority does not guarantee victory.
The asymmetric nature of an ideologically-based (as opposed to a nationally based) foe, reduces the effectiveness of a conventional military power. We are simply unable to bring our force to bear against the enemy. One out of five people on the face of the earth are Muslim. If their alienation from the rest of the world continues to grow, and said alienation continues to unify them against the more powerful nations, I believe their ability to pose a credible threat will increase. (Note, Hitler was never able to kill more than a handful of Americans on US soil.)
One final point. The Muslim world holds a trump card. Oil. By one (admittedly biased) estimate, by 2020, 83% of the world’s oil reserves will belong to predominantly Muslim nations. http://www.iags.org/futureofoil.html That’s a huge economic lever.
Ted
Defensive insurgent warfare is much, much different than offensive conquests, so your N. Korea and Vietnam analogies don;t really hold. They may be arguments for why we could not dominate, militarily, the region, but they don’t hold up as an argument for why they could conquer us.
the oil car dis important, but there are already tehcnologies that can mitigate that card. there will be more by 2020, and if and when that card is played, there will be even more. Again, it just don’t add up to complete domination of the Western world.
Ted. sorry missed the Hitler thing.
Yes, but he was able to conquer Euopre and if he had been able to get past the USSR and the UK, he would have been position to threaten the physical security of the US. Japan certainly did.
Again, the Muslim world, even if compeltely unified, just does not have that abality.
The point is not what they can do conventionally against us but just look at the economic problems 911 brought about
You don’t need an army or nuclear missles to destroy a country
Could you imagine what 10 individual suicide bombers with small nuclear
bombs can do to 10 cities
Even conventional bombs with 30 bombers getting into our schools killing thousands of our children would cause great economic
problems
these instances would possibly create another depression which makes this country not so strong anymore
They understand they will not win a direct military confrontation
but having nuclear weopons and their ability to convince their young to kill themselves for Allah makes them more dangerous than a conventional
army
And the way they will get this distructive material to the USA is through our Southern Border
We cannot control who comes across so who in their right mind would believe we can control what comes across this border
Remember the aim of the radicals is to eliminate all non-believers
Iran gets nukes Isreal is first but just realize that non-believers are
also Christians,Budhists and you Atheists.
If a cartoon can create such mayhem it wouldn’t take much to convince
enough of the masses that all people other than Muslums are non-believers and need to be converted or killed
They can claim revenge to Europe for the Crusades
These Radicals want society to go back to the way we lived in the Middle Ages because it easier to control people who are not free or educated
You may not agree but this is the agenda and History will prove this out
If we don’t act now we are on the eve of a Religious war
Remember they had plans to kill the Pope
What is going to happen when they succeed
For all you who feel that it ain’t all what it seems why is it only our side that is misleading
The other side is killing innocent people but to some this is justified
If these individuals would look evenly at this they would realize the true evil and threat to our survival is the other side and not the US
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